salmon cakes with lemon yogurt sauce

I tend to shy away from anything savory touting the word "cake" in the title. Cake should be sweet and desserty, not fishy and garlicky. Kind of like how bread deserves to be in loaves, but the word meatloaf brings an instant shudder (don't get Zillah started), no matter how good-tasting it might turn out to be. But then there's something about eating a crab cake sandwich with a dash of lemon and maybe some chopped tomatoes while walking down the boardwalk in a beach town on the east coast...so maybe a salmon cake would be all right after all.

Ixoj's reaction:

And it turns out that they were more than all right--they were delicious and exceedingly simple. So good that I actually made them twice within 7 days and I decided several things: 1) If you're lazy when cutting up the salmon, your cakes will have over-sized chunks and won't be as delicious. 2) They are an excellent alternative to any other way one might want to cook salmon. I can't tell you how sick I was of grilled/broiled salmon with a bit of lemon and oil on top. 3) Cilantro is a recommended addition to either the cakes or the sauce. 4) Leftover salmon cakes are good, but should definitely not be heated up in the microwave at work unless you wish to be ostracized by your coworkers. Room temperature seems like a pretty good option to me.

Zillah's reaction:

Having led a life markedly and sadly bereft of boardwalks, I have to confess I'm not particularly familiar with crab cakes and their relatives (I think I may have cut my salmon into over-sized chunks. I promise it wasn't out of laziness. I think it has more to do with the fact that I'm not entirely sure how large 1/2" is. Flakier pieces of salmon would have been better.). This obviously should change: more boardwalks and more fish cakes.

I did a few things differently with this recipe. I toasted a piece of wheat bread in the oven and crushed it into crumbs, but it didn't provide quite enough binding power, so I tore up half a piece of fresh bread and that helped. Mayonnaise makes me want to die, so while I halved all the other amounts, I put in the whole egg, and added a tablespoon or so of yogurt. Next time I'll add a bit more cayenne. I did add some fresh mint to the yogurt, which was pretty fabulous. The only salmon I could find was lightly smoked, which I heartily recommend. Just as a side note, the cakes were a bit bigger than I thought they would be, but that could be because my salmon chunks were a bit on the large side--I'd go for as flaky as possible. Also, they do reheat well on the stove, and probably would in the oven too.

Salmon Cakes with Lemon Yogurt Sauce
Adapted from Gourmet Aug 2008

1 pound skinless salmon fillet, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 slices firm white sandwich bread, torn into small pieces + about 1/3 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp cayenne
2 T chopped chives, divided
1 1/2 tsp grated lemon zest, divided
juice of one a lemon, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Mix together bread and crumbs, mayonnaise, egg, coriander, cayenne, 1 tablespoon chives, garlic, 1 teaspoon zest, half the lemon juice, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add salmon and season with black pepper (and cilantro or mint if you'd like). Form into 4 cakes (4 inches in diameter).

Heat oil in a pan until a bit of water flicked into the pan dances with delight. Cook salmon cakes, turning over once, until golden and just cooked through, 6 to 7 minutes total.

Stir together yogurt, remaining lemon juice, 1/4 teaspoon salt, remaining tablespoon chives, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon zest (and cilantro or mint, if you'd like). Serve salmon cakes with sauce.

a red lentil soup (and an explanation)

Once upon a time, a stroke of luck meant that we were freshmen roommates. over the course of the year, we discovered that we liked to spend the wee hours of the morning making impossibly elaborate desserts with naught but a couple of thrift store pots, a very chocolatey cookbook, and the enthusiasm and boundless energy of two teenagers living away from home for the first time. As the years went on, the desserts expanded into impossibly elaborate meals, and then just an impossibility as we tragically moved too far apart for more than an annual coming-together in which we attempted to make all the recipes we had been emailing each other for the last few months, leading to a serious strain on both stomachs and bank accounts. (But Thanksgiving 2011 was so. damn. good.)

We were lamenting the tragedy of the situation while in the midst of one of these gluttonous cookfests this last Christmas, when ixoj was in London. And then gradually it dawned that it was high time we exploited the wonders of the brave new world of technology in which we live (read: video chat) to further our ongoing quest to stuff our faces. And then we could put the recipes on our very own blog. It's not quite the same as sitting down together and devouring a portabello lasagna or going into raptures over a malted milk chocolate cheesecake, but it's better than nothing.

And so we now have a blog. Fed up with all the food styling and photography blogs masquerading as cooking blogs, and having to scroll through 50 million pictures of eggs perfectly lined up on pseudo-vintagey anthropologie plates, bowls of flour, sugar, and baking soda (really? as if we've never seen flour before), or about-to-be-zested-lemons on our way to a recipe, we decided that unless we happened to have a camera nearby or it would be helpful, this would be a photo-free (or maybe photo-"lite") blog (plus zillah's camera is cheap and pathetic and she doesn't know how to use it well, and the whole time difference thing makes the optimal lighting thing difficult, and we just don't really care). There will also be occasional posts about food-related deliciousness in our various cities of residence/travels (expect a lot of London--as soon as zillah leaves, ixoj arrives).

And so, on to the recipe.

Red Lentil Soup with Lemon 
(adapted from 101 Cookbooks)

After several abortive attempts undermined by the vagaries of employment and time differences and visitors and so on, we finally managed our first trans-Atlantic rendezvous. And since it's soup weather in frigid London and ixoj is helping zillah overcome an aversion to lentils (it seems like a bit of a stumbling block for a destitute vegetarian) and this seemed like a good way to circumvent that lentilly mushiness (zillah has a texture thing), 101 Cookbook's red lentil soup with lemon seemed like a good way to go.

Recipe notes:

We both feel that Heidi's recipes tend to be a bit bland. Good, but bland. Bland isn't necessarily bad--pierogis are bland, but delicious, as are bread and oatmeal and spaetzle--but her recipes always promise a certain amount of taste-bud-ecstasy...and then...not so much. We adapted the recipe a bit to add some flavor, but both agreed that it needed even more--perhaps more ginger and lemon. The recipe seems to call for too much water, and immediately after pureeing, the soup seems really watery. It thickens up quickly, though, so you might need to add water if you heat it up the next day.

Zillah's reaction:

I have long hated lentils because of that strange combination of mushiness and graininess (mealiness?) that they tend to have (like beans. awful awful beans.). But it turns out that pureeing them smooth means no more mushiness or grittiness (or at least it's tempered enough not to be an issue). I think that the recipe would benefit from some spice--either chili powder or a fresh, chopped chili added with the garlic and ginger in the first step. I also don't think that it really needs the rice--next time I'd probably eat it with some sort of flat bread, since I felt a bit like I was eating a casserole, and I kind of hate most casseroles. Maybe the rice would work better if the soup were a bit thinner. I found some Cypriot yogurt on my walk home through Kentish Town, and it was uber-tangy (technical term) and delicious and cut through the blandness of the soup well.

Ixoj's reaction:

I have always loved lentils for most of the reasons that Zillah hates them. I'm a texture person in every kind of way (except for things that are squshily reminiscent of eye balls). The original recipe did indeed seem rather bland, but after the addition of plenty of garlic, ginger, and lemon, I thought it perked up nicely. If you enjoy a bit of heat with your meal, definitely add some chilies to the onions. And now about the rice. I ate several small bowls with slight variations. Bowl 1: soup and yogurt only. Bowl 2: an overly heaping scoop of rice, soup, yogurt. Bowl 3: a teensy spoonful of rice, soup, no yogurt. I thought the soup was great completely without the rice and great with a small spoonful of rice, but with a lot of rice it turned into something bordering on goulash. I like goulash, but soup masquerading as goulash is not my favorite thing. So my advice is to include the rice, but add it sparingly. I also thought it was a little weird to top the soup with spinach. If I were not planning on having leftovers, I would probably toss the spinach in to the pot of soup rather than serve it as a topping.

The recipe
(4-5 servings)
2 c. red lentils, rinsed
5 cups water or vegetable broth, plus more to thin the soup to your liking
1 T turmeric
4 T butter
sea salt
1 large onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
2.5" knob of ginger, peeled and grated
2 t cumin
1 t mustard seeds
Bunch of cilantro, chopped
Juice of at least 2-3 lemons--probably a bit more to taste
1 8 oz bag baby spinach, roughly chopped

warm, cooked brown rice
Greek yogurt

Bring the lentils to a boil with the water, turmeric, 1 teaspoon sea salt, and 2 tablespoons butter. Lower heat, cover, and simmer until tender (15-20 minutes). Puree. You may need to add more water after the soup thickens a bit.

Melt some more butter in a skillet. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant, then add the onion, cumin, and mustard. Cook over low heat until soft. Add the cilantro, stir briefly, and then remove from the heat. Stir the onion mixture into the soup, and then stir in the lemon juice. Add salt and pepper as necessary. Heat the remaining butter in the same skillet, then toss in the spinach and stir, cooking just until barely wilted.

Serve the soup with the rice, either in the bowl or on the side, and top with the spinach and some Greek yogurt.

a british easter and a leek-spinach-goat cheese quiche

Since cooking for one is a bit of a drag sometimes (ramen: easy and delicious), whenever I have someone over for dinner (this doesn't happen often, since I know maybe 6 people here), gluttony tends to be the order of the day. Complicating this, though, are all of the issues one encounters when one has very few actual cooking appliances, one's oven is an utter mystery, and ingredients, while labelled in English, are still befuddling (vegetable suet?). It's like when ixoj and I first started cooking together, before we had proper, grown-up equipment like rolling pins and colanders and multiple pans, and were propping up cakes with oatmeal canisters (which I'm certainly not above doing now).

Anyway, I was determined to have a proper Easter feast--buoyed up by a momentary parting of the clouds and a brief cessation of snow.  No leg of lamb or hot cross buns (the latter strike me as more appropriate for Christmas anyway--the whole currants and cinnamon and mixed spice (the British equivalent of pumpkin pie spice) and whatnot), but after an amble around the muswell hill farmer's market, i ended up with a fennel, radish, and landcress salad (I'm a sucker for an enthusiastic farmer waxing eloquent about a foodstuff I've never heard of); celeriac, Jerusalem artichoke, and pear soup; leek, spinach, and goat cheese quiche; asparagus (this bit was thanks to tesco); excellent bread courtesy of friends; and lemon pound cake w/ lemon curd and strawberries.

[Sidenote: in case you have an incomprehensible oven like myself and you try to make a lemon pound cake and take it out when the top is dark brown and turn it out only to discover that it's completely uncooked in the middle and the batter starts to run out all over the place, you can actually slide the cake back in the pan--cooked side down--and put it back in the oven and it will eventually cook through--and the sugar syrup you drown it in will help it stay together, especially when you cut it into slices in an attempt to camouflage the disaster. And if you try to cream the sugar and butter with an immersion blender since you don't have a mixer and your arm is cramping up from desperately trying to achieve a fluffy consistency with naught but a wooden spoon, the cake will be a little more dense than you might be used to, but it's still perfectly edible, by which I mean addictive, especially when smothered with lemon curd.]

Anyway, it was all good tasting, appropriately spring-like, and I think, post-cake-but-pre-quiche, I may have finally deciphered all of the different symbols on the oven--apparently the setting I thought was 'cook like a regular oven' just turns on the upper heating element extra high (read: broiler. I think.).

Leek, spinach, and goat cheese quiche
375 F / 190 C, about 35-40 minutes

Crust (from Smitten Kitchen)
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch (or, in the UK, corn flour)*
1/4 t. salt
3 oz / 6 T unsalted butter
1 egg
*Note: corn flour in the UK is fairly similar to cornstarch in the US. according to the wisdom of the Internet, though, this is apparently not the case for corn flour in the EU.

Mix together the flour, cornstarch, and salt. Cut in the butter however you like--fork, a couple knives, or rub it in with your fingers--until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the egg, and mix until you have a dough. Roll out into a circle and press into a 9" tart or pie pan. (Or, if, like me, you don't have a rolling pin and don't feel like using a soy sauce bottle, you can just press it into the pan.)
Refrigerate for at least 30 min.

Filling
olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, smashed and/or diced
3 medium leeks, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
nutmeg, to taste
a couple sprigs of thyme, chopped
large bunch spinach, chopped
about 8 oz. goat cheese (or more if you like--I just added it until it basically covered the base of the quiche)
3 eggs
1 c. milk
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds. Turn the heat to low, and sauté the leeks and onion slowly until soft and caramelized (about 30 minutes). Add the nutmeg, thyme, and spinach--stir until the spinach is just wilted. Remove from heat.

Beat together the eggs and milk. Season with salt and pepper.

Crumble the goat cheese over the crust. Add the leek/spinach mixture, and then pour the custard over the filling. Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes, or until the filling is set and a knife inserted in the middle comes out fairly clean. Let it cool for 10 minutes. Good tasting warm or cold.